Spooked by regulations

ROCHESTER — Earl Ward was just days away from opening his AtmosFear haunted house in West Aliquippa a year ago when he found something scarier than any skeleton, vampire or psychotic clown.

The state called; Ward needed insurance if he was to open.

“I assumed that because the building was insured, I was insured,” Ward said this week as he prepared to open AtmosFear at its new location in Rochester. “There wasn’t enough time to get the insurance I needed, so I had to shut down.”

Since then, getting ready for the 2008 haunt has been a second full-time job for West Aliquippa resident Ward. Besides taking steps to make sure he was in compliance with the state’s regulations, he found the old Brighton Avenue apartment building back in the spring and started working on plans right away.

“As soon as I got in here, I started drawing up plans for where things would go and what we could do,” he said, while sitting in a break room festooned with cobwebs, costumes and headstones last week. “We’re pretty much ready to go, but it’s taken a long time to get here.”

INSPECTIONS

All those haunted attractions that spring up in late September every year bring thousands of people to their doors. That’s why the state Bureau of Rides and Measurement Standards, the division of the state Department of Agriculture that regulates amusement parks and carnivals, requires inspections.

“Safety is our foremost concern,” said John Dillabaugh, the bureau’s director. “There is a lot of money in the business of scaring people, and we want to make sure everyone is doing things the right way.”

Dillibaugh said the bureau licenses about 1,400 private inspectors who spend the year checking carnival and amusement park rides and, when the season approaches, haunted attractions. Each haunted house gets several visits from the licensed state inspectors and local code officials and from inspectors who report directly to Dillibaugh.

“We’re looking for proper exits, fire retardant systems, tripping hazards,” he said. “And we want to see local permits and a certificate that proves the attraction is insured.”

Dillibaugh said most haunted house operators are familiar with the regulations; Ward said he made sure he was by going through a weekend training session in Harrisburg in the spring to become a licensed inspector himself.

“I know the regs inside and out,” Ward said, proudly flashing an ID card. “It actually helps you prepare, because you know exactly what the inspectors are going to be looking for.”

Independence Township resident Fred Prebski, who opens Freddy’s Haunts for its 17th year this weekend, said his biggest challenge over the years has been working with officials from the township.

Prebski said there was some initial trepidation about his haunted trail.

“We’ve done some events for them, and we’ve worked with them over the years,” he said. “They’ve been really good to us once they realized what we’re doing. At this point, I have no complaints.”

PREPARE TO SCARE

Inspections are one thing. Getting the attraction itself ready is another.

Prebski didn’t need an entire year to get Freddy’s Haunts ready for another season because the basic part of the structure has been in place for years. But Prebski said he’s always tinkering and expanding the trail, and will actually be doing some work this fall, even as the trail is open on weekends.

“We’re going to be adding a new games area and we’re going to be starting on that while we’re open in the evenings,” he said. “It seems kind of crazy to be expanding during the season, but waiting until November usually means it’s too late, and we can get a real jump on this now.”

Finding the people who provide the scares is one of the bigger challenges for haunted attractions.

Prebski said he has a roster of about 120 people, but counts on 75 to 80 showing up each night; Ward has found about 25 willing to give up weekends for the next month to scare the bejeebers out of AtmosFear’s customers.

“It’s not easy. The hours are long, you’re in a sweaty costume and makeup and you never know how people are going to react to you,” Ward said. “One of the things I always tell the new ones: you’re going to get hit by a customer. It’s just a reaction some people have, and you have to be ready for it.

“But the thing is once you find someone who loves scaring people, you know they’re going to do everything they can to show up,” he said. “I did it at Freddy’s, and Fred taught me so much about this business. I did it at Kennywood. I love it. Even after getting shut down last year, I knew I would be coming back.”

SPECTRAL SECRETS

Neither Fred Prebski, owner of Freddy’s Haunts in Independence Township, nor Earl Ward, owner of AtmosFear in Rochester, is too willing to part with trade secrets.

But both gave up a couple hints about how things work behind the scenes at their haunted attractions, which both opened for the season this weekend.

Hear a clacking noise while you’re wandering through AtmosFear? That’s coming from a child who’s using a souvenir to indicate that he’s a little scared. “We give those out to little kids,” Ward said. “We tell them to give it a shake if they’re getting a little too scared; our people know if they hear that noise they should back off a little bit.”

You’re strolling through the trail at Freddy’s, and that guy with the chainsaw is calling you by name. How’d he know? Prebski said his staff is always talking over two-way radios about potential problems, about needing a break and about some of the habits of a group of customers that is working its way through the trail.

“If someone catches a name, they’ll call it ahead,” Prebski said. “That’s definitely something we use to make the scare even better.”